Key IRS official to take the Fifth

House oversight panel looking for answers today

May 22, 2013

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Deirdre Shesgreen

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Protesters line Cincinnati's Fifth Street at one of several rallies around the nation as tea party groups protest IRS scrutiny of tax-exempt applications. the Enquirer/Gary Landers / Cincinnati Enquirer/Gary Landers

Ex-commissioner: I didn’t
know severity of targeting

The former Internal Revenue Service chief testified Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee that he first learned in the spring of 2012 about the tax agency’s use of inappropriate terms – including “tea party” – to scrutinize tax-exempt applications. But the ex-commissioner, Douglas Shulman, who presided over the agency when the IRS targeting took place, said he didn’t know “the scope and severity” of the extra scrutiny given to conservative groups until he read an audit released last week by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Tuesday’s hearing was the first time Shulman – a George W. Bush appointee who was IRS commissioner from March 2008 to November 2012 – has addressed his role in the IRS controversy. In June 2011, officials in Washington learned about the criteria and directed the Cincinnati reviewers to stop focusing on groups with tea party affiliations, “only to have staff in Cincinnati change the criteria back again,” J. Russell George, the inspector general, told the Senate panel. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who sits on the Finance Committee, said the targeting could not just be laid at the feet of workers in Cincinnati. “It comes from a leadership vacuum that’s persisted for too long,” Brown said.

Tuesday’s other developments

• Tea party group sues IRS in Cincinnati [Page A5]• Former IRS chief says he didn’t know severity of targeting [Page A5]• Cincinnati protest is one of largest [Page A4]

More

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WASHINGTON — Lois Lerner, the embattled IRS official who played a key role in the agency’s screening of tea party groups for additional scrutiny, will invoke the Fifth Amendment at a House oversight committee hearing today, according to a letter sent to the committee by her lawyer.

Attorney William Taylor cited the criminal investigation into the IRS’ decision to target tea party groups for greater scrutiny beginning in 2010.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” Taylor wrote. He asked that his client be excused from appearing at the hearing.

It’s a move destined to frustrate Ohio GOP Congressman Jim Jordan.

Jordan has been hounding the tax agency for 14 months – Lerner, head of the IRS’ tax-exempt division, in particular – over the treatment of tea party groups after a tea party organization in his home district, the Shelby County Liberty group, came to him with stories about their dealings with the IRS.

It was Shelby County Liberty’s story, in part, that prompted Jordan and Rep. Darryl Issa, R-Calif., to request an Inspector General audit of the IRS. That audit is now at the center of a political firestorm raging in Washington.

Today’s hearing – before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee – will be the third congressional hearing in six days examining the IRS’ handling of tax-exempt applications from conservative groups.

“Ms. Lerner remains under subpoena from Chairman Issa to appear at (today’s) hearing,” committee spokesman Ali Ahmad said. “Chairman Issa remains hopeful that she will ultimately decide to testify about her knowledge of outrageous IRS targeting of Americans for their political beliefs.”

Jordan had hoped to use today’s session to grill Lerner about the IRS’ handling of conservative applications – this time on the record, with a crush of public and press attention and a bevy of new facts at his disposal.

“I think she completely misled us,” Jordan said in an interview. “I think she lied to us.”

Lerner has apologized for the IRS’ actions, which she characterized as an inappropriate “shortcut” used by IRS workers to deal with an onslaught of new tax-exempt applications. She and others have said the screening of tea party groups was developed and implemented by a handful of “frontline” workers in the IRS’ Cincinnati office, which reviews all applications for tax-exempt status.

The IG report says Lerner was first told of the special scrutiny given to tea party groups in June 2011. But Jordan says that in her communications with his staff and in letters to the committee, Lerner never gave Congress any indication of the problem – despite repeated questions from GOP lawmakers.

“She said there was nothing out of the ordinary going on,” Jordan said in an interview.

Even if Lerner doesn’t talk when she takes her seat at the witness table today, members of Shelby County Liberty will be watching at home.

“I have Fox (News Channel) on all day long,” said H.R. Pence, communications director for the Shelby County tea party group.

It was Pence’s PowerPoint presentation – delivered at a town hall meeting in February 2012 at which Jordan was the featured speaker – that helped draw the congressman’s attention to the issue.

Flashed up on the screen were some of the more egregious requests from the IRS:

• Provide printouts of any social media site you use.

• Provide time, location, schedule and handouts for each event you have held or plan to hold.

• Provide detailed contents of speeches, speakers and volunteers at any events.

“It seemed to be harassing,” Jordan said of the story the Shelby County group told, noting that he subsequently heard similar accounts from other tea party groups around Ohio.

Shelby County Liberty had applied for tax-exempt status on Sept. 9, 2010, and received the IRS’ follow-up questionnaire 17 months later, in a letter dated Feb. 7, 2012.

“Our board sat and talked about it quite a bit, trying to decide whether to withdraw our application,” Pence recalled of the group’s reaction to the IRS’ questionnaire.

“We already had $400 invested,” she recalled of the application fee, “... so we were undecided.”

By this time, the group had already enlisted the help of Jordan’s legislative staff. And the congressman soon started sending letters, including an eight-page missive to Lerner, dated March 27, 2012, saying the IRS’ questionnaires seemed to go “well beyond the scope of the typical disclosures required” by the IRS.

Trying to turn the tables, Jordan and Issa, who chairs the House oversight committee, asked the IRS for reams of documents relating to the agency’s examination of tea party groups. The committee’s staff also met with the inspector general who oversees the IRS, J. Russell George, prompting him to undertake the audit released last week.

Tom Zawistowski, leader of the Portage County tea party and former president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, said if Jordan had not taken the grievances of tea party groups seriously, the issue may have never come to light.

“Jim (Jordan) and Darryl Issa were the ones who really pushed this through and got the investigation going,” said Zawistowski.

The kicker for Pence came Nov. 7, 2012. That’s when the IRS notified her tea party group that it had received its tax exempt status. That was one day after Obama won re-election, she noted.